Trainers keep out of water at SeaWorld whale shows

San Diego  The killer-whale shows went on at SeaWorld yesterday, but trainers stayed out of the water as a precaution following a bewildering incident during a performance the previous day when an orca bit its trainer.

Veteran trainer Ken Peters, 33, suffered a fractured left foot and was hospitalized. "He's doing fine and we fully expect him to return," said Mike Scarpuzzi, vice president for zoological operations at the Mission Bay aquatic park.

Meanwhile, Kasatka, the 5,000-pound, 30-year-old female whale who bit Peters, was back on the job, performing in the 36-foot-deep tank at Shamu Stadium.

"At this point, we do not know why this happened," Scarpuzzi said. "We are undergoing a complete review of our training procedures, involving all of our trainers here as well as at our parks in Florida (Orlando) and Texas (San Antonio).

"We will make adjustments to the training and performing program if we find that's necessary. We decided not to have anybody in the water with the animals until that review process is completed."

Scarpuzzi said he didn't think the "clear, calculated look at our program" would take very long.

Peters, who has trained killer whales at SeaWorld for 12 years, was bitten during the finale of a show on Wednesday afternoon.

Kasatka was supposed to leap vertically out of the water, enabling Peters to dive from her nose, a stunt the pair had performed thousands of times, Scarpuzzi said.

Instead, the whale grabbed the trainer's foot and headed underwater. Surfacing less than a minute later, Kasatka ignored other trainers' signals and dived again, still clinging to Peters. The trainer stroked the whale and calmed it and the two surfaced after about a minute.

Fellow trainers were able to insert a net between whale and man, and the trainer swam to safety.

Kasatka was "harvested" off Iceland and has three offspring -- two of them here -- performing at SeaWorld parks. She made headlines in 2001 when she became the first killer whale to successfully give birth in captivity after being artificially inseminated.

It wasn't the first time Peters and Kasatka had tangled. The whale tried to bite the trainer during a show in June 1999.

Peters hustled out of the pool unhurt that time, saying one of the orca's teeth may have hit his shin. Kasatka also tried to bite a different trainer in 1993, Scarpuzzi said.

Scarpuzzi emphasized that attacks by killer whales are "certainly very rare, considering the thousands and thousands and thousands of good, positive performances" by the 19 orcas at SeaWorld's three parks.

But such incidents were more common in years past.

At least 14 SeaWorld trainers were injured during a four-month period in 1987. One suffered a crushed pelvis, broken leg and four broken ribs when a whale breached at the wrong time and crushed him as he was riding on the

back of another whale.

Trainers did not go into the pools with SeaWorld's killer whales for six months afterward as the training program was revamped.

Inspectors from the California Occupational Safety & Health Administration were at SeaWorld yesterday to investigate the killer-whale incident, said Cal-OSHA spokesman Dean Fryer.